Keep Calm and Carry On: The Short- vs. Long-Run Effects of Mindfulness Meditation on (Academic) Performance

Lea Kasser, Mira Fischer and Vanessa Valero
Additional contact information
Lea Kasser: University of Regensburg, CESifo and CEPR
Vanessa Valero: Loughborough University and CeDEx

No 349, Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series from CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition

Abstract: Mindfulness-based meditation practices are becoming increasingly popular in Western societies, including in the business world and in education. While the scientific literature has largely documented the benefits of mindfulness meditation for mental health, little is still known about potential spillovers of these practices on other important life outcomes, such as performance. We address this question through a field experiment in an educational setting. We study the causal impact of mindfulness meditation on academic performance through a randomized evaluation of a well-known 8-week mindfulness meditation training delivered to university students on campus. As expected, the intervention improves students' mental health and non-cognitive skills. However, it takes time before students' performance can benefit from mindfulness meditation: we find that, if anything, the intervention marginally decreases average grades in the short run, i.e., during the exam period right after the end of the intervention, whereas it significantly increases academic performance, by about 0.4 standard deviations, in the long run (ca. 6 months after the end of intervention). We investigate the underlying mechanisms and discuss the implications of our results.

Keywords: performance; mental health; education; meditation; field experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 I12 I21 I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-11-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-hea, nep-hrm and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://rationality-and-competition.de/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/349.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Keep Calm and Carry On: The Short- vs. Long-Run Effects of Mindfulness Meditation on (Academic) Performance (2022)
Working Paper: Keep Calm and Carry On: The Short- vs. Long-Run Effects of Mindfulness Meditation on (Academic) Performance (2022)
Working Paper: Keep calm and carry on: The short- vs. long-run effects of mindfulness meditation on (academic) performance (2022)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rco:dpaper:349

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series from CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Viviana Lalli ().